Do You Get Pissed Off Every Day?

I was looking at my stats this morning and figrin’: it was probably time to put up a fresh post. That’s how it works, chez moi.

But what? Do I find something that everyone is sure to agree with, like any of the latest and regular nonsense inspired by the health experts in the media? Or, do I go with the “uncomfort zone,” and blog about something that pits some of my readers against others in comments because, that’s always a fun ride? I put the question out on Twitter and got back resounding admonition to to go with uncomfort. OK, so I will, but as a bone to those who desire nothing but harmony, I have devised a plan to include you too. And so here goes. This is basically a link roundup and commentary of my morning, since I awoke and reached for my iPad.

~ + This is just a cool personal anecdote, but I got an email yesterday from the head of the Swedish National Team for ski-orienteering, which as I gather, is a race to goal on XC skis using only a map and compass. A portion of the World Cup for this event will be held in Bear Valley, just a few minutes up the road from our vacation place. So with eight competitors, with three pairs of skis each that need waxing and other maintenance, they’ve rented my place during the last week in January. I feel honored and cooled about that. So there you go. Group hug, ‘cuase it’s so sweet. Seriously. Sweet.

~ +/- Sorry all you OWallS “occupiers,” but this made me laugh my ass off at your propensity to pull your pants down for the world to see…and…nothing to show for it. Thanks to Fouzhan for the inspiration.

Occupy the Tundra

You know, this is nothing in the world like real civil disobedience and you know what else?; neither were the 60s, in general (with a couple of exceptions like Kent State and so forth). It must be simply noted that there is an element of petulance among those privileged — most often those perhaps smart enough to have made their own way, but by accident of birth, had their way made from the start — and they’re either resentful, or feel guilty. My message to them would be to study, in this order: Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. The latter two literally changed the world. How? Go back to Thoreau.

Otherwise, you’re just a bunch of pussies who will be soon forgotten. In this collectivized society, I do not begrudge your intention nor desire to effect change. But I laugh my ass off at your methods and most particularly so, that you delude yourselves into thinking you’re having an impact. You are most certainly not. Laf.

How many of you are sitting in a prison cell — on charges more important than…no real charges — maybe at least long enough to write: Letter from Birmingham Jail?

Get serious, or just go back to whatever you were doing and stop being an irritant. Or, how many of you have lost a half million in the market in the space of two weeks, as I did, and didn’t complain about it?

Pussies.

Update: Two videos, the first is 2 minutes and sets up the second, which is 6 minutes and Pure Gold.

I can’t find a way to embed the first, so here’s the link. It’s about a #OWS protester who wants someone to “throw him a bone” and pay his college tuition.

Soup for Sluts

“Cheap, Fast and Easy.” I’m typically nostalgic over my college days, but we had only “Top Ramen.” Simply no comparison.

~ + Doctors Warming to Caveman Diet Trend. Ho, hum…and link!.

Yea? Fuck doctors. This merely demonstrates what fucking expensive failures they are in general, the few exceptions excluded. What, half-million a year they make and they’re followers, FOLLOWERS? …To make sure the path is safe?

Just…Fuck Doctors. Like we even needed them at all? And that’s all. Well, you might break a bone or otherwise need a body mechanic. There’s that.

Oh, and you who were so enamored of this, Tweeting it with righteous abandon. Why? Ask yourself why. What, you need confirmation from the very people you’ve been speaking out against all this time?

Do you have pathetic in your closset?

Update: Commenter Tara offers a dissenting view.

Richard, I have to take offense at your off-handed comments about the CBS news piece. You know full well that the “doctors” who are “warming” to the “caveman diet” are ones that are in our court already and who were, in fact, at attendance at the AHS. Dr. Kim Mulvilhill (the only press at the AHS) has done the best job she can in wording the series carefully so that the sheepple will assume that it’s THEIR doctor who is on board. This legitimizes the lifestyle for them and makes it more acceptable. In fact, we couldn’t have hoped for better press from the mainstream media. WE don’t need the acceptance for ourselves (we know we’re on the right path already and most of us already shun doctors), we need the masses to believe. So far any press we’ve received has been fairly negative and we have been touted as “barefoot, meat-eatin’ freaks.” The first positive mainstream press the Ancestral Health Movement has received needs to be embraced by our circles. Isn’t it our collective goal to spread this message to the masses? Isn’t that part of the reason why you write this blog? Just sayin’.

Actually, I was not aware of who these docs were, and the way the reportage hit me was that these were docs originally opposed, now warming to the idea, and not that they were longtime advocates. Obviously that does make a difference in terms of the way I blasted.

~ + for thinkers and minus for those who insecurely force feed their kids Bible Bullshit.

I only wish I had had such a wondrous opportunity at 8 years old. It’s not really the fault of my parents; they always did the best they knew; but when you know better, then do better, and this is better.

Hitch

That’s one of my favorite people in the whole wide world: Christopher Hitchens, likely living his last few days, weeks, months, and takes special and focussed time out to sit eye to eye with an eight year old free-thingking girl, who asked him what’s good to read.

I do love a story like that, and it’s not only because it makes me remember how ridiculously ignorant was the spectacle of my my youth, where people authoritatively strutted around with marked up Bibles — the more marked up, the more pious — as if they had a fucking clue (they did not). Read the Blble, as I have. But read other literature as well, and if for no other reason, that you may become as unimpressed with the Bible as I have.

If you take the time to explore any of the links in this particular diatribe, make it this one. It’s a touching story in how it transpired, and the way in which Hitch dealt with it — as if he’s taking every last opportunity to reach a mind. The event, including Dawkins’ wonderful introduction, is on YouTube. I would appreciate if those links got dropped in comments.

~ Juxaposition. Mr. Save a Pretzel for the Gas Jets. Actually, the link to this prayer was contained within the text of that last and wonderful story; I suppose, kind of as a foreboding. Bow your heads in helpless, pathetic shame and look to your Your Ruler (in the sky). Take a look. This is the best we can do folks?

The pathetic element, including ruler cheerleading, is off the scale in the context of any wild human animal. That’s what it’s about for me. Forget the moron. Forget the ignorant, and forget the you-can’t-fix-stupid. How about the bend-over pathetic? You call yourselves men? Well, I have to doubt it. No wonder you have to beat your wives into submission figuratively through intimidation, social machination or when all else fails: literally, with fists. Having lived the breath and depth of this thing called fundamentalism, as a kid, from the inside and the outside for decades, but observing: I have to conclude that’s it’s nothing more than pussy control. Everything is geared towards keeping their women submissive and in check. It begins by keeping them ignorant and stupid. Then it continues.

I was fortunate to have experiences with self-confident women early enough, so that I never had the urge to be a fraud.

But you know, I sat through hundreds of similar prayers as a kid, from about 10 years of age to when I went my own way at 18. And I must say that when I wasn’t just simply bored to death…like at the Wednesday night “prayer service,” where everyone would try to outdo everyone else with the longest, most outlandish, choreographed prayer…I suppose I was occasionally enamored of the off the cuff artistry of the thing, in a poetic sense.

But then I read some real literature. …Then I ventured out and spoke in front of people off the cuff. …Then I began to write, think, and edit. …And then I also began to learn that people see you not as your are, but in some way that implies a responsibility on your part to keep things real. Actually, you don’t even have to be willfully fraudulent; people are just that gullible and dumb. Still. Actually, most people want to be fooled. No, not even: they will struggle and fight to be fooled. They will get very angry with you if you crackle their silly fantasy, and it’s that way with most, as this prayer in actual public, from someone running for PRESIDENT, demonstrates. Reality and the fear that comes with it are that hard to deal with, I guess.

Domesticated Human Zoo Animals are generally pathetic. What other conclusion can I reach?

And I realized, in the end, it was all basically dummies who don’t think for themselves, live in fear, look for someone to tell them what to do, are enamored of things they either can’t do or are afraid to do — like writing and public speaking — and you have your perfect storm of Idiocracy.

I’d had an inkling to transcribe Rick Perry’s prayer and deconstruct it. It’s simply too painful to do. I have a hard time with even realizing that I have family members who are this ignorant, fearful, and submissive: and that it’s a huge lot of them. Where did I even come from?

On the bright side, something that makes you laugh and cry, all that the same time…?

Reader Interactions

Comments

Christopher Hitchens? I saw him get his ass handed to him by william lane craig in so cal. Not so sure I want my kid learning philosophy or religious views from a scientist. I’ll give my kids plato. Dawkins and Hitchens need to stick to collecting data like good little scientist and let those educated in Philosophy of Science interpret the data. These guys like to write against religious dogma yet consistantly interpret every shred of data into their own presuppositional lenses, what hypocrisy. Sorry…love your food and diet articals, not so much your ideological ones. I know you think their kinda one of the same, but my ideological views are quite opposite of yours and have no problem utilizing paleo. But I do appreciate your brutal honest and feel the same!
Also can’t wait for you to do a post on caloric intake (not sure if you have). I really like your diet lifestyle and the Lean Gains guide but feel really confused on how much I should be consuming. Any help would be awesome!

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“watch the full debate its not even close, Hitchens was totally outmatched.”

Chris, I don’t really know how to tell you this but I could only stomach a couple of minutes of the portion of the debate. I simply have no reason to spend over 2 hours of valuable time to watch something where I’ve heard all of the nonstop question begging for 40 years.

In high school, a fundamentalist Baptist school, we used to go watch “debates” between “Dr” Henry Morris of the “Institute of Creation Research” ( icr.org/ ) and evolutionary biologists over at UNR and other places. Oh, the ICR motto?

“Biblical, Accurate, Certain”

We were so impressed. But, then again, none of us understood the science; science which, incidentally, has come a long way since 1975. I actually subscribed to the ICR newsletter throughout my college years at Oregon State.

There simply is no way to reconcile faith and science, because science is antithetical. And as Dan already pointed out, this is first paragraph of the Doctrinal Statement at the place where Craig is a “research” professor.

“The Bible, consisting of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, is the Word of God, a supernaturally given revelation from God Himself, concerning Himself, His being, nature, character, will and purposes; and concerning man, his nature, need and duty and destiny. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.”

As with that YouTube, you stop right there. There is simply no point in going any further.

You believe what you want, including that Christopher Hitchens “was totally outmatched.” In what, in screeching, because I must tell you that it’s rather like Hitch sitting across from a chimpanzee and when he says something, the chimpanzee screeches loudly as they are known to do, then all the chimpanzees in the audience do likewise.

Ok, ha img time on my hands while getting dinner ready for the wife unit who’s currently on the SF Bay on a boat, I took the time at least to listen to Craig’s 20m openong argument and then Hitch. Then I got about halfway into Craig on rebuttal and seriously, I can’t take any more.

“The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.”

As any 101 student in formal logic can attest, this proposition can not be true if any contradiction can be found in the referenced text.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html
has listed 461 internal contradictions.
Game, set and match.

I’m tired of being pissed off at the “Occupiers,” now I just want to either punch them in the throat or give them an open handed bitch slap. It’s about all they’re worth. I kinda doubt most cops would even care.

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I think you were better off having the experience of your upbringing. You have knowledge of both worlds. I was not raised in any religion – my parents were very “live and let live” about it and didn’t really care which direction we went in (there were 5 kids in my family). I don’t really get annoyed at anyone about what they choose to believe in – it is much more interesting to sit back and observe what they do with their belief and why they chose that direction in the first place. One sister has gone “born again” just recently. I suspect she has a lot to feel guilty about and hopes to “save” herself. As I said, interesting.

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I get what you’re saying and yes, it does give me a certain perspective. I also don’t mean to imply that I had a bad childhood. Quite the contrary and even there was many social aspects of the church experience that were cool enough. Life is ultimately what you make or it anyway.

But in retrospect, I’d have prefered to have been raised in a secular environment that emphasizes science and reason over faith.

Wow..didn’t know this was a grammar blog. Really I didn’t mean for it to come off as backhanded, just disagreed on the Hitchens and Dawkins thing. I do see you’ve adopted their ad hominem approach to debate and don’t think you need to respond that way. Don’t be so sensitive, its just my opinion man and I didn’t call you a name for believing otherwise.

Actually, while William Lane Craig does have a divenity degree he also holds a PHD from the University of Munich and PHD in philosophy under John Hicks and the University of Birmingham. Impressive in my opinion. Real philosophy deals with reality, not word play or manipulation.

Anyway, I do enjoy your blog posts for the most part and your food porn section. If I respond again I’ll make sure to get it proof read. I do have a B.A and M.A but wouldn’t have made it through without spell check for sure, haha.

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Well that’s what you get when your starting premise is the infallibly inspired word of an infallible omnipotent being. That’s “reality,” a static view of existence that is challenged by virtually every bit of scientific knowledge gained.

Understandable a thousand years ago. Remarkable to see it on display to this day.

Sorry…abusive ad hominem. I only brought up his education because you dismissed him simply because of his divenity degree. It’s funny, I thought you just said degree’s didn’t matter in the case of Hitchens and Dawkins??

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This is the school William Lane Craig is a “research” professor at: talbot.edu/about/doctrinal-statement/ That is their doctrinal statement. The first paragraph, thats all you need, game over done and done.

“They are without error or defect of any kind.” – Referring to the old and new testament. Demonstrably false by any half way competent biblical historian or theologian.

Dan there is actually quite a few biblical historians that adhere to this position, many like FF Bruce who have been used by the Smithsonian Institute for the expertise on document history/analysis. The statement “without error or defect of any kind” is in relation to the original documents. Clearly scribal errors/additions have happened and we know this based upon the the oldest documents (alexandrian found by Westcott and Hort) vs the Byzatine doc’s utilized in the 1611 translation.
In any case, this doesn’t discredit his intellect to uphold that doctrinal statement and he would be in the company of actually quite a few biblical historians and theologians.

I’m not “pussyfooting around.” I think you know exactly where I stand. I was merely providing evidence that the statement “any halfway competent” biblical theogian or historian wouldn’t adhere to this doctrinal statement, is completely false and unfounded.

As far as your 3 options, I think even one of my atheistic lit professors would disagree with you on 2nd rate literature. Plus, how clever could these people be to have latched onto 2nd rate literature anyway?

Why should we imagine that there ever existed a perfect book? What evidence do we have that people have ever understood anything like the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? How come every time any truth is substantial enough to come under historical scrutiny, it inevitably fragments into all kinds of half-truth (as certainty gives way to probability)?

I think the day for claims that any perfect book was ever written are pretty much past. If you want to argue that there ever was a perfect book, plenty of historical writings give the Bible some really good competition (e.g. the Dao de Jing, not to mention the poetry of Homer: the one is light-years ahead of anything in the Good Book as we know it, and the other is at least as good). Why pick the Bible? How did I get so lucky, just happening to be born into the one true culture, with the one true book (or minimally marred copies of what used to be a perfect book)? I’m just not buying it. There is a lot of pure crap in the Bible, and not all of it appears in the Old Testament (though a lot of it does: why does the perfect or once perfect book advocate for genocide, slavery, women as property, strict punishment for ridiculous “offenses” like gathering sticks on the Sabbath?). The easiest way to remain impressed with the Bible is to avoid reading it, especially in the original languages (which, when learned, provide you access to a lot of other literature that is overall much better, especially if you go easy on the Hebrew and focus on Greek).

Read an Aramaic translation of the bible. Also, read the Apocrypha (most branches of Christianity have their own version of what comprises an apocryphal text and what does not, so the list is varied).

The text of the bible differs from branch to branch of christianity and is dependent upon the translation and from which source language came the translation.

I’ve read the KJV and the NAB versions of the bible – yes, cover to cover, all books, both translations/version, as part of my studies in literature at university (and as part of my early experience as a Catholic*). It has greatly informed my understanding of the hows-and-whys of a lot of our history and our problems. It has helped bend me into a libertarian more than it kept me on the straight and narrow conservative or liberal path (and if you think liberals are not as bad or worse than conservatives, you might need to do some reading and throw in some critical thinking on top of that).

It takes time to read all of this. It is also helpful to read the criticisms levied at various translations of the bible, and historical or anthropological studies on how these varied translations were fed to people to create societies that serviced the purposes of ruling minorities (who nevertheless held majority power). This is true of Catholicism, Anglicanism, or any faction of christianity that sought to become a majority and establish a power base.

*I use the capital-C for “Catholic” in order to distinguish from the common adjective “catholic” which means “universal.” I make this disclaimer because I figure that someone might say “hey you capitalize Catholic but not bible or christianity!” Well, capitalized “Catholic” is different from the generic adjective “catholic” so it’s important to make the distinction.

[comic relief warning] this reminds me of a radio commercial i heard, on a rock station yet, while driving through Houston — it claimed that the bible proves the legitimacy of the catholic church. duh — why wouldn’t it? — the catholic church compiled the bloody book! :-)

I dismissed him because he’s a manipulator of the uninformed, if you’ll read my comment. I only said I went to divinity school, and only to mean that I have some first hand experience with this sort of thing.

I left after a year, which if you ask me, is better than a degree in divinity.

As luck would have it I was in Manhattan on the first weekend of the so-called occupation. Out of curiosity–okay, I had time to kill before the Yankees game–I wandered down to check it out. All I saw and heard were white trendily tattooed twenty-somethings bitching about the closest pushcart being out of Vitamin Water Zero and not being able to get a signal on their Droids/iPhones to upload to their blogs or YouTube. I talked to maybe seven or eight, and all of them complained about crushing student load debt, most of which was accumulated through graduate school–you know, a TOTALLY VOLUNTARY CHOICE TO ATTEND (as is college, but that’s a different rant). “Why aren’t you protesting your schools?” I asked. “They’re the ones charging the fees.”

“It’s not FAAAIR! They told me I’d get a better job if I got my master’s/doctorate in psychology/minority studies/art history and I DIIIDN’T! It’s not FAAAIR that the government wants me to pay loans back that DIDN’T HEEELP!”

Oops, time to hit the subway up to the Bronx so they don’t see my optic nerve-straining eyeroll over overentitled self-absorbed yuppie pups believing that they should automatically get something just because they want it.

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Richard I wish more people had your sense of humor. I laughed my ass off when you used Thoreau as an example of who isn’t a pussy. Masterful. Hitch and Dawkins are doing the world a favor, IMO, and it’s really a sad state of affairs when people like Dawkins aren’t allowed to speak (Detroit!) their mind in fucking “America”. I put that in quotes to illustrate that at this point Thomas Jefferson was right and we have fucked ourselves into a very non democratic/republic corner. But that’s just me…

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I’ve been out there in the world and I’ve been on the inside of baptist fundamentalism. And I can promise you this: I saw a lot more women get their asses beat after their man had too many beers than I ever saw in the church.

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It is wrong to beat others. It is also wrong to raise them with the notion that they are categorically inferior, that they have no purpose outside of serving other people who use ideology to lead them about like cattle. Believe it or not, there are people in the world who neither beat their women nor have to domesticate them with chauvinist dogma.

I was rolling my eyes at the “Occupiers.” Then I had to see the image that drove me into a tirade — some idiots wearing Guy Fawkes masks. First, why are people modeling themselves after a dude who FAILED to achieve what he wanted? Second, I’d bet my Playstation 3 that none of those dearies even knew who Guy Fawkes was until “V for Vendetta” came out.

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richard, spot on here! i’m literally across the street from this shit show. the ows has stated they’ll be in the park for the long haul, bad weather and all. well, just this a.m.(misting throughout the night), i’m walking to WORK and pass a couple bank atm’s being occupied. imagine that, the people there protesting are the same people that shelters them. hmmmmm… won’t be long in my opinion!

also, great work with the site!

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The thing about Gandhi and MLK is that they had the tide of history flowing in their direction. Same with Lech Walesa, Václav Havel, et al. Not saying they weren’t all great people but Britain wasn’t going to hold onto her colonies forever, and the Brits definitely weren’t willing to spill blood over the matter. Even in the much earlier American War of Independence (not a revolution, BTW), the British might have won had they been willing to be much more ruthless. Likewise civil rights and were going to happen regardless of whether or not MLK had existed. Passive resistance doesn’t work against guys like Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot.

I don’t see the tide of history running against Statism at all, so I don’t see Thoreau-esqe civil disobedience as being more than a pipe dream. The State is more than happy to crush any and all in this respect. And the State is always getting stronger.

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I agree with you about totalitarian regimes, up to a point. But then look at what’s been happening in Egypt, Libya, Syria and so forth. And of course, sometimes they collapse of their own weight.

I think mass CD is still viable in America and Europe, but it has to be massive and hard hitting. But most people won’t risk it in the non-violent way (even to the point of protecting your oppressors against those who mint take up violence) it’s supposed to be carried out until such time as they feel they haven’t much to lose anyway.

A great opportunity for mass CD in America would be for all small businesses, say 30 employees or less, the vast majority of businesses, stopped withholding income taxes and social security and paid their employees their actual wages, without deductions. Now that could really stir up some shit in a hurry, and the people for the most part would be behind you too, having received a 30% pay increase overnight.

Yeah, but it seems that a lot of the Arab Spring (which seems to be turning to autumn, or winter for groups like the Copts) or mass CD in general has to do with demographics, just like it did in the US in the sixties. I’m not sure what the demographics were for the French ’68 revolt or the Prague Spring but I’d guess there was also a majority under 25 or perhaps it was just influenced by the ‘counterculture’ of the yuppie generation.

People who own small businesses are some of the sharpest, most practical people in any given country that has a decently functioning rule of law. There’s no free lunch at that level and the rules are stacked against you. Still, practical is the key word. The kind of CD you are talking about is seriously inhibited by the Prisoner’s Dilemma. My wife was recently audited and she only managed get out of a ridiculous fine for not logging her miles correctly on the company car by resorting to crony capitalism (her father knew a guy). But she’s pretty far form any overt form of CD and so am I.

Of course it’s employed when conditions are ripe. Otherwise, you have taking up arms and revolution and civil war which is far messier.

I’m simply saying that this is a viable route to more freedom, which has been shown. Actually, I’m really making a case to wait until the time is ripe. In the end, CD is worth studying and knowing about in order to save lives and destruction.

Why evolution is true? Pfft… It’s about as ridiculous as creationism or RDs believing that saturated fat is bad for you.. It’s nice that the 8 years old girl is reading all of those books but she is in for a rude awakening one day that there’s no such thing as free thinker…

To weed out faux free thinkers, I always liked to pull out Intervention Theory by Lloyd Pye – I always had fun with it. The look on their faces is priceless esp the bible thumpers.

I used to think Bible is for people needing something to get through hard times or for mind control and ignore true science. As I got older and gain bits of knowledge over everything, I began to look at bible as a history book with some clues to the past but you’d have to dig a bit further back of where Bible came from and so forth (I never went to Church for Sunday services so I’m starting from scratch but I’d need the book to begin with..) . I still have about a trillion pieces to go to fill in the puzzle to get a clear picture of everything… I’ll probably be dead by the time I get to only a quarter of the puzzle. Nobody esp those PhD idiots know everything.

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1. I’m always skeptical of undated essays and I can find nowhere to indicate when this was written, which is important in a constantly changing field of knowledge.

2. He takes a very long time to get to the point, instead, opening with a huge non-sequitur over how long it took continental drift to become establishes science, the implication being the Pye is right and it’s just going to take a lot of time until his ideas are accepted. But the one has zero to do with the other.

3. Then he moves onto the old speciation saw, which is basically an ignorance or misunderstanding of what a “species” is. It’s merely a man-made crude categorization scheme. See evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_40 . Any notion that speciation presents any real problems for evolutionary scientists is just plain wrong.

Only then does he begin to get into his space alien ideas which is little more than the same God did it non-explanation. And so what were their origins? Other space aliens, and so forth in an infinite regression?

“Another example. Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It’s the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots (“oh NOOOOO, of course we aren’t talking about God, this is SCIENCE”) and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn’t rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar — semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such ‘Directed Panspermia’ was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent ‘crane’ (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists’ whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity — and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently — comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.”

“This ‘Ultimate 747’ argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment — however implausible — was designed to illustrate intelligent design’s closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don’t think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.

“Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won’t get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. “What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN.” “Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE.” I can’t remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure — that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience).”

The point is believe whatever you want to believe. It’s time consuming to verify everything esp considering what happened with saturated fat, cholesterol, etc. Sports Nutrition was my main thing since high school. I got a college degree in Exercise Science along with advanced Sport Nutrition (a waste of time) and some advanced biology classes. Turns out after graduating from college, you realized that there are more up to date information that made what I’ve learned in school outdated. It sucks… Makes me wonder about everything else except for hardcore science like math, engineering, chemistry.

Pye has a point –

“Evolutionists coasted along, secure in their dominant position, making the creationist mistake of allowing their theoretical framework to ossify into dogma. As the 20th century neared its end, the theory proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859 had morphed into an intellectual straitjacket with all the outward trappings of a religion. There were tenets of the faith, colleges for its perpetuation, and high priests and cardinals tasked with ensuring that all contrary views were neutralized or, when necessary, eradicated. As with the creationists they overthrew, their feet grew to fill the shoes of oppression.”

15 years and they still think saturated fat is bad for us… I’m surprised how slow things are moving in nutrition at mainstream academic level. Oh well.

You should wonder about them also (except that engineering is applied science and math is not a science). I’m quite skeptical of things like string theory and I’m in no way an expert in these matters. Being skeptical of everything is a way of life, dude. I’m almost not at all skeptical of evolution or relativity,

Pue has no point other than that, perhaps evolutionary biologists, paleo anthropologists and so forth were more interested in getting out to the field to learn more than they were in getting locked into endless debate with breathless Mother Goose fans.

They were dismissive, that’s true. They figured a glimpse of reality might be enough. They misjudged. That’s true enough. That’s to their virtue and to your shame.

I saw that Pye is going to have ebook over Intervention Theory out on the 18th. Over 350 pages. I couldn’t find the date on this essay. I’m guessing sometime in the last 10 years. I am most intrigued by this Starchild skull mainly because it had genetic test done and looked at by experts to rule out deformity. Hmm.. only 900 years old and not homo sapien. He’s also going to have those conehead skull from Peru tested for DNA to see if they are homo sapien or not. I found it interesting because they were depicted as ETs in Indiana Jones and Crystal Skull movie. I’d be shocked if the test showed it to be not homo sapien..

And that’s not to say that I don’t understand falsification. But friar Occahm would suggest to me that there just might be a simpler explanations than space aliens who managed not to leave a sngle shred of advanced technology.

Richard, I have to take offense at your off-handed comments about the CBS news piece. You know full well that the “doctors” who are “warming” to the “caveman diet” are ones that are in our court already and who were, in fact, at attendance at the AHS. Dr. Kim Mulvilhill (the only press at the AHS) has done the best job she can in wording the series carefully so that the sheepple will assume that it’s THEIR doctor who is on board. This legitimizes the lifestyle for them and makes it more acceptable. In fact, we couldn’t have hoped for better press from the mainstream media. WE don’t need the acceptance for ourselves (we know we’re on the right path already and most of us already shun doctors), we need the masses to believe. So far any press we’ve received has been fairly negative and we have been touted as “barefoot, meat-eatin’ freaks.” The first positive mainstream press the Ancestral Health Movement has received needs to be embraced by our circles. Isn’t it our collective goal to spread this message to the masses? Isn’t that part of the reason why you write this blog? Just sayin’.

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Oh, and if you watch it (which I suggest you do), you’ll see the first person interviewed is ME! Then Mark Sisson, then Loren Cordain, then Lynda Frassetto. It’s heavily edited but the best press I’ve seen on this…

LOL, thanks. I think this series is the best mainstream press we’ve gotten, but it’s still so heavily edited. You can tell they’re trying not to piss off their sponsors or cause toooo many waves but they’ve had an overwhelming response to the series, and it will probably go national at some point. Well, one thing at a time; first we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. :)

Well Kevin, at least you demonstrate that there’s a lot more depth here on this blog than just singing to the choir and choirboys as readers and commenters.

I never want to be in a position where I’m having to figure out how to please all the people all the time, which can’t be done anyway, so I go the opposite way altogether: piss off all of the people some of the time.

You do make me recall a bit from the film Private Parts where some ratings and marketing guy is talking to Pig Vomit or one of the other dudes trying to drum up reason to get rid of Stern. Paraphrasing, and I don’t recall the actual numbers, but:

“Well, the listeners who love Stern listen for an average of 1 1/2 hours per day.”

“Ah, and how about those who hate him?”

“That’s just it; they listen for an average of 3 1/2 hours per day.”

Thanks for reading. Feel free to drop a comment any time. :)

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Whew! You need a flak jacket in here. I watched the Hitchens-Elmer Gantry debate and thought Hitch won in a walk. But, I am biased. I think clear-headed logic, based on empiricism, trumps triangulation, based on superstitious nonsense, every time. I know, not very fair minded– but what the heck.

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Whole different ball game, Karen. I respect that and even champion it,.. Alll docs should be emergency, osteopath, heart & neurosurgeon and radiologist,l that’s about the extent of what we really know. They are as incompetent as just about anyone everywhere else.

I personally think of myself as Christian but not religious. When it comes to the beginning of the universe and the origin of life you pretty much have to believe in infinite something whether it’s infinite time (very unlikely), an infinite creator, or an infinite multiverse. I don’t hold much with religion as an institution personally. Maybe if I were a theology student or something I’d have a use for it, but the state of my soul is between God and myself and I’ve got no business getting involved in anyone else’s state of grace.

And believe me, I am not anti-science. Genesis 1 was written by a very well-educated tent mender who lived 2,000 years BC. It makes perfect sense to me that he recorded it as he understood it. And I do believe in evolution, but I don’t see it as mutually exclusive with a creator. At any rate, I can ramble on that for paragraphs so I’ll cut myself short here.

One of the things that does concern me about the paleo lifestyle movement as a whole is how hostile it is towards religion. It’s the exact same sour taste in my mouth that I got when talking about evolution and astrophysics with my pre-seminary friends. If you’re going to say “you have to believe XYZ to be a true follower,” then you are going to leave out a lot of people who can’t possibly bring themselves to believe XYZ. It doesn’t bother me here, it’s part of Richard’s schtick and I wouldn’t expect that to change. (And of course there’s the not-small consideration that he’s right about the fact that the Church as an institution has done some considerably bad things that have retarded our development as a culture and a species.) Here I would get a lively, well-read debate when I choose to leave a comment like and this actually makes me feel more welcome. When I occasionally get blindsided by something like this on MDA, it feels much more hostile and unwelcoming. Much more of a “haha, xtians r luzers!”
*****
On OWS: I really don’t get the sense they’re fighting for anything. It just seems like a bunch of well meaning kids who got hit by the bus of reality as soon as they stepped off campus. If only we could be nice to each other and the government would pack us off to day school then everything would be nice – that seems to be the message I’m getting. I just don’t get how there can be so many people who aren’t willing to hustle to get what they want.
Hustling is hard. You’ve got to get outside the box and spend a lot of energy to make not-as-much progress as you’d like. Currently I’m hustling to get closer to my dream job and finding ways to work around not having a college degree. It’s a lot of work. I frequently get pissed off. It would be a lot harder if I didn’t have the support of my husband and sister. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun too. And I refuse to let college stand in the way of my education. (Going back to school to get the damn piece of paper is in my near future. Mostly because I want to play with the neat toys the college has.)
****
On being pissed off: Nothing energizes me more. I have a -violently- competitive streak. Nothing gets me more motivated than shouting back “I will fucking bury you, cocksucker!” when I get pushed down or screwed over. The caveat is of course, there has to be a direction for all that energy to push me. Right now it’s all going into hustling for my dream job.

And that’s certainly enough to read for now……

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I understand your feeling of being christian but not being religious (maybe that’s an accurate way of saying it, maybe not), because I generally feel the same way. I was raised by a loving family in the religious tradition of Catholicism. I attended church regularly until I was 16, and was able to articulate to my pare9-nts the whys and wherefores of my resistance to religion. That doesn’t mean I forgot some of the basic values of Be A Good Person, Don’t Steal, Don’t Kill, Don’t Lie, Don’t Forget Your Priorities.

And that, in a nutshell, is what I think a most religions try to imbue, at the most simple and basic level, in their followers. Be a good person. I try to be a good person, but what you consider “good” and what I do, might be very different. To me, the best description of a “good person” might be one who takes a personal interest in helping those who suffer, and otherwise does not take notice or offense if someone chooses to live a lifestyle that differs from mine. I don’t think our public policy ought to be in the business of interpersonal contracts in any way, shape, or form (think “gay marriage”). I don’t mind paying taxes for certain services. Roads and defense come to mind. Overall I think our religious-political complex has become too intertwined, and people have come to depend on elected leaders/officials to make decisions that (some) people find too difficult to make or on which to compromise.

Glad you like it, Dennis. I have used this is the past for “Links & Quick Hits” where it’s basically a link roundup with maybe just a little commentary. So this is an expanded version. Yea, often I have a number of things I might want to write something about, but it’s not really enough for a whole post and I don’t care for the practice of making individual posts for each one in order to artificially boost traffic,

Glad you’re taking advantage of the comments. It is often that the comments become the most important part of the post. I think that’s certainly true here.

Richard,
Sooooo many parallels between the paleo cult and Fundamentalist religion it is not funny. For all your ‘reading’ you don’t seem to see that you are repeating core elements of your fundamentalist childhood upbringing, only this time with adherence to another narrow and dogmatic ideology. I am a baptist, arrgggghhh wait a minute, now I embody evolutionary psychology and eat lots of saturated fat. I am paleo. For fuck sake, grow up, stop following other people and participating in a revivalist cult like paleo and individuate. And btw, try sitting in stillness for 1 minute, absent of thought and tell me there is nothing profound in concentrative meditation. Do that for a few years, and add a few minutes each month, and maybe you might realise a lot of truth comes from within, and real knowledge is acquired through self reflection. Whether we are fallen angels or risen apes does not fucking matter my friend. What does is how you grow as a man. fucking boring myself sick and enjoy your blog, but hate the cult like paleo feel. Individuation rocks. Paul d

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@Paul d
Perhaps you might try some of that “reading” yourself. You clearly haven’t a clue about paleo nor about Richard’s approach to it. And, by the way, many paleo people meditate. Sheesh, what are you even on about, man?

“Sooooo many parallels between the paleo cult and Fundamentalist religion it is not funny. For all your ‘reading’ you don’t seem to see that you are repeating core elements of your fundamentalist childhood upbringing, only this time with adherence to another narrow and dogmatic ideology.”

You apparently have no real idea of your subject matter: me.

Perhaps this provides a clue:

“…absent of thought and tell me there is nothing profound in concentrative meditation.”

So let me guess, you don’t really _think_ this, your fingers just somehow typed those words and somehow, you know them to be meaningful.

“…real knowledge is acquired through self reflection.”

Knowledge is _only_ acquired by means of the senses, then integrated into a hierarchy of concepts. Reflection, self or otherwise, is for the purpose of gaining insight, understanding and even enlightenment over knowledge. But you actually have to begin with tangible knowledge and that can only be obtained by the senses.

“hate the cult like paleo feel”

You are clearly not familiar with who I am. I’m pretty safe in saying that if you did a poll of paleo peeps who generally know all the bloggers and authors out there and you ask them who is the most non-dogmatic, non-fundamentalist, MOST controversial in the entire Plaleo blogosphere, it’s me, without a single doubt.

I’m the one who started the ball rolling over not eating potatoes, and distancing paleo from low carb.

I’m the one who says there is no paleo diet, there’s 7 billion diets.

I’m the one who says that Paleo is equator to arctic circle and sea level to 16,000 feet and everything in between.

I’m the one who says I eat a zero, moderate, and high carb diet (depending on meal, day, week, month).

Now, just to make you just a bit more uniformed than I already have, and because I’m feeling charitable today, here’s a few past posts for you:

You had a childhood informed by fundamentalist religion. You seem to blog your displeasure about it. Correct me if I am wrong. You run a blog that has a free the animal title, and seem to blog alot about paleo foods. Correct me again if I am wrong. Ok. Observations of mine.

The paleo cult like feel I touched on refers to you blogging about a topic, and a shit load of people like paleo Joe and paleo Jane and paleo blah blah getting on going, ye what the fuck do those non paleo wankers know about saturated fit, goof on you Richard. Great stuff. Ye paleo saved my life blah blah blah.

Your attempts to distance yourself from the anticarb high fat splinter cell of the paleo movement, and your attempts to define paleo in such broad terms make me think you are again rebelling from a movement that like a lot of diet dogma, has parallels in religion. You have your hierarchy, high priests (most read and commented bloggers in the movement that represent it in public forums and debate it’s merits). My question to you is why identify with another movement like paleo, it has a cult like quality, with an ingroup and outgroup, a need to criticise and argue and prove itself against different groups with a different diet ideology , who engages in endless fucking confirmation bias, excludes things such as grains based on evolutionary thinking, and is clearly fragmenting due to one simple fact. High fat no carb and not counting calories may never get you lean. Your own stagnation demonstrated that. So, maybe when you hit 50, you may realise, all movements however you define them gave flaws. Forming an allegiance with a movement, identifying yourself as part of it, and defending is one of the greatest ways of closing off thinking and so called objectivity. One day I would like to see you drink a few vege juices, do a raw food vegan program for a week, and see that maybe just maybe, it is not all evil. FYI, I eat alot of meat, love the taste of saturated fat, had to give up grains and milk long before a lot of people embraced paleo (I was tested by drs using multiple protocols and under my own initiative went through a systematic elimination protocol). Through reading and researching a great deal, I have dropped 17kgs, cured a trashed liver with a shocking case of fatty liver deposits and a shit enzyme profile, and at 41 am the leanest and strongest I have ever been through strict adherence to know fucking diet dogma. Almost 10%. And if all knowledge is derived as you say, far out, you have solved a great riddle that has been troubling me and my fellow humans for millenia. Ummm silly me, I should have realized by now with all the great paleo writers out there that all my thoughts are generated by the senses. Shit, you’ve got it, we should just abandon all the neuroscience, psychologyetc, who only claim to have theories of the mind and thought. And btw, concentrative meditation is a means by which to concentrate on a single point, idea etc and stop all input. The points in time between thoughts are of interest. I am the first one to admit that I have no idea about life, but I have realized that dogma in any form is dangerous to free thought. Good day to you. Paul

Is global warming a threat to the human species?
“Yes. You could say that the human species is a threat to the human species. I recommend Al Gore’s film on global warming. See it and weep. Not just for the human species. Weep for what we could have had in 2000, but for the vote-rigging in Jeb Bush’s Florida.”

What do you think of what Richard Dawkins is doing?
“I think Richard Dawkins is doing a lot of damage. I disagree very strongly with the way he’s going about it. I don’t deny his right to be an atheist, but I think he does a great deal of harm when he publicly says that in order to be a scientist, you have to be an atheist. That simply turns young people away from science. He’s convinced a lot of young people not to be scientists because they don’t want to be atheists. I’m strongly against him on that question. It’s simply not true what he’s saying, and it’s not only not true but also harmful. The fact is that many of my friends are much more religious than I am and are first-rate scientists. There’s absolutely nothing that stops you from being both.”

I could not agree more. I have found, in and out of my own family, those most adamantly and vocally opposed to religious authoritarianism are, at the same time, fond of secular authoritarianism. This is inconsistent and illogical.

I share none of the admiration some of my fellow scientists, as well as non-scientists, have for Dawkins. Replacing God with Man, as is done in climate “science”, because of negative bias toward the human species, is the same as replacing saturated fat with grain because of negative bias toward eating some of our relatives (pig, cow, lamb, chicken).

“I have found, in and out of my own family, those most adamantly and vocally opposed to religious authoritarianism are, at the same time, fond of secular authoritarianism. This is inconsistent and illogical.”

You have a point there, Walter.

This is why I think the only politics consistent with atheism is free market anarchism as well.

Juan,
my case in point. “many paleo people meditate”. Fuck me. Enlighten me then. Given you have reconstructed groks diet on dubious assumptions – Richard after working with martin you seemed to have changed your tune a little” where is the proof our ancient grok boy meditated. Aren’t you being hypocritical? Jeeeessssssh.

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Paul d, wow, you really don’t know much about the “paleo” idea! Nor do you seem to understand that whether someone meditates has nothing to do with paleo (or any other approach to diet and nutrition) but you did, for some reason, bring it up.

I don’t have time nor inclination to do your research for you, but I will indulge your question, at least somewhat. People who claim to eat “paleo” tend to be people who dig into things for themselves. I suppose this is something like a sheep would do, right.

Broadly; most paleo approaches revolve around optimizing health by using nutrition. This is arrived at by using ancestral/paleo-anthropological/evolutionary logic, coupling that with research, anecdotal inferences and personal experience. Also, most people, I think, are working on an assumption that the kinds of foods we evolved to eat and by eating, are likely the most beneficial kinds for us to continue to eat. This is basically what the rest of the entire animal kingdom does, so it’s not much of a stretch to think it’ll apply to humans, too. Eating real food, not Man-made processed, fake food is part of the “ideal”, as well. Another approach is to look at it all as an avoidance of the most likely causes of the so-called “Diseases of Civilization” (if you do not know what these are, then you have done zero research). The putative most likely causes are the Neolithic foods; primarily grain-based or floury foods,that is, excessive fructose, and industrial seed oils. After these things, there are many fuzzy-edged definitions of what paleo is or isn’t, and that tends to be very individuated. Again, just like sheep, I guess.

As for your bizarre non-sequitor arguments and accusatory language (“sheep”) I wonder, did you invent meditation? I mean, I assume you meditate and that you might even consider yourself to have evolved a bit. Did you make this all up, or did you learn it from some kind of “reading”? If you didn’t invent meditation, language, tying your shoelaces, etc., then by your own unassailable “logic” you, too, are a sheep. Good on ya..

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I'm Richard Nikoley. Free the Animal began in 2003 and as of 2018, contains over 4,600 posts and 110,000 comments from readers. I cover a lot of ground, blogging what I wish...from health, diet, and lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social issues, and cryptocurrency. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances in life. [Read more...]

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